Officials of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA) Lagos have arrested two persons for allegedly being in possession of illicit substance that tested positive for heroin.
They were arrested during inward screening of passengers at the arrival wing of the airport.
This is even as operatives of the narcotic agency disclosed they have uncovered new tricks by drug trafficking cartels to circumvent security checks.
Mitchel Ofoyeju, Head, Public Affairs of the agency, who confirmed the arrest in a press statement, said one of the suspected drug traffickers, Roland Chukwudi Tochukwu, 37, was apprehended for importing 2.045kg of heroin from Nairobi, Kenya.
Tochukwu was allegedly found to be in possession of a fake travel ticket that indicated he was coming from China.
Ofoyeju disclosed that another suspect, Maduka Nnemeka Peter, 39, was also caught attempting to export 1.555kg of cocaine to Dubai.
He said that preliminary investigation by the anti-narcotic agency revealed that Tochukwu deliberately replaced his ticket with a fake one showing that he was coming from China instead of Nairobi. This was intended to place him on a low risk profile. But his expectations were dashed as the heroin concealed inside his luggage was detected during screening of passengers on an Ethiopian Airline flight.
The NDLEA commander at the Lagos airport, Ahmadu Garba, while explaining reasons for the falsification of the ticket, said that drugs are more expensive in Asia.
